Three hours of my life I will never get back.
Built a workflow following a tutorial EXACTLY. Every node. Every connection. Every setting. Perfect.
Hit test.
Nothing happened.
Complete. Total. Silence.
THE SPIRAL:
First hour: “Maybe I missed something small.”
Checked every node five times. Settings matched tutorial perfectly.
Second hour: “Maybe the nodes are broken.”
Tested each node individually. All worked fine.
Third hour: “I am too stupid for automation.”
Almost gave up. Almost deleted everything. Almost quit.
THE BREAKTHROUGH:
Sat down. Deep breath. Started from the BEGINNING instead of debugging the middle.
Looked at the very first node. The trigger. The webhook.
Wait.
The webhook URL.
OH NO.
THE STUPID MISTAKE:
I copied the tutorial’s example webhook URL. Because it was right there. Easy to copy.
My contact form was sending data to THEIR webhook.
My workflow was listening to MY webhook.
Two completely different URLs.
My form was talking to someone else’s server. My workflow was waiting for messages that never came.
THE FIX:
Generated my OWN webhook URL from my workflow.
Pasted it into my form settings.
Hit test.
BOOM. Notification appeared. Data saved. Everything worked INSTANTLY.
Three hours wasted on one wrong URL.
WHAT I LEARNED THE HARD WAY:
Test triggers FIRST. Before building anything else. Send a test webhook. Make sure it actually fires. Would have caught this in 30 seconds.
Webhook URLs are unique. Each workflow generates its own. Cannot copy from tutorials. Cannot reuse from other projects. Fresh URL every time.
Small mistakes at the START break everything at the END. I debugged the complex stuff for hours. The problem was at the very beginning.
Start simple and expand. Should have tested trigger alone. Then trigger plus one node. Then trigger plus two nodes. Would have found the issue immediately.
THE SILVER LINING:
Workflow runs perfectly now. Gets 2-3 form submissions weekly. Every single one triggers correctly.
Those 3 hours taught me more than any tutorial ever could. Now I test triggers FIRST on every new workflow. Saved myself probably 10 hours since then.
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